General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Nvidia Shield Portable Gets Lollipop Update

Posted: 23 Jul 2015 05:54 PM PDT

Nvidia Shield Review

Seems like it's been ages since Nvidia updated its first Shield device, the Shield Portable handheld console. However, it's only been since February and that update, aka Software Upgrade 101, merely improved stability and implemented fixes that makes emulators run better than before. The latest platform release, Software Upgrade 103 launched today, is one whopper of an update.

In fact, according to Nvidia, Software Upgrade 103 brings the platform up to Android 5.1 "Lollipop." Shield Portable owners can install the update now. However, Nvidia warns customers that the update will break some apps that were pre-installed on the console because they are not compatible with this build of Android. These include Sonic 4: Episode II THD, Expendable: Rearmed and the Android Browser. Miracast support has also been replaced with Chromecast.

"Please note that we also included the latest Twitch app (white Twitch icon) in this system update," Nvidia said on Thursday. "If you previously updated the Twitch app on KitKat (purple Twitch icon), you will note after installing the new system update that you will have two Twitch apps (white and purple Twitch icons). Simply erase the purple Twitch icon as that version is no longer supported on Lollipop."

Customers aren't required to upgrade to Android 5.1 "Lollipop." However, the company is providing an image of Software Upgrade 101 for those who don't like the taste of Lollipop and want to roll back to the chocolatey KitKat. This older OS image, listed here for downloading, was originally posted on February 11, 2015. Nvidia notes that customers rolling back to KitKat will lose all data that was previously on the SHIELD Portable before the Android 5.1 upgrade.

In addition to upgrading the platform to Android 5.1, Software Upgrade 103 also smashes a bug that prevented books from being read within the Google Play Books app.

The Shield Portable launched nearly two years ago, a handheld console sporting a fresh, non-bloated install of Android 4.2.1 "Jelly Bean." Powered by a Tegra 4 SoC, the biggest selling point is seemingly not Shield Portable as an Android console, but as a device that allows PC gamers with a Nvidia "Kepler" GPU to stream specific PC games to the handheld. Called Gamestream, this service costs absolutely nothing.

The Shield Portable also has access to a wide variety of PC games that can be streamed from Nvidia's GRID-based on-demand network. This service, free for now, will charge the user a membership fee starting July 31, 2015. The company provides more than 50 PC games in high definition including The Walking Dead, Batman: Arkham Origins, Borderlands, Dead Island and more.

Bethesda's $50 Fallout Anthology is the Bomb, Drops September 29

Posted: 23 Jul 2015 05:03 PM PDT

Sweet collectible for Fallout fans

Fallout Anthology

If you're a diehard Fallout fan, then you've likely played through all the previous Fallout titles and still own each of them. However, if for some reason you don't still have copies around, or you're looking for a killer gift idea for that friend who has yet to discover the Fallout series, Bethesda announced an awesome Fallout Anthology bundle that you might be interested in.

The Fallout Anthology includes Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics, Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition, and Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition all packed into a Fat Man mini-nuke, complete with an audible bomb sound. Official add-ons are part of the package, too.

Bethesda is labeling this thing as the "complete Fallout game collection," which is true on the PC side of the equation. But if you want to get technical, it's missing Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, a 2004 title that was limited to the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox -- big whoop!

It's also missing Fallout 4, which isn't out yet -- it's set to release on November 10, 2015. However, the mini-nuke includes a slot for the game disc, in case you're planning to purchase a hard copy.

Bethesda says its Fallout Anthology will release on September 29, 2015 in North America and on October 2 across Europe. It will cost $50 "and yes, Fallout Anthology will be limited," Bethesda's Pete Hines stated in a Twitter post.

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Newegg Daily Deals: Crucial 32GB DDR4-2133 (4x8GB), Intel Core i7-5820K, and More!

Posted: 23 Jul 2015 11:44 AM PDT

Crucial RAM

Top Deal:

We're another day closer to Intel's Skylake launch, and if you're planning to build a system around one of the new CPUs, then now's the time to plan. You may have already seen some tantalizing Z170 chipset motherboards, and if that's the route you're going, you'll need some DDR4 memory. And if it's capacity you're after, then check out today's top deal for a 32GB kit of Crucial DDR4-2133 Desktop Memory for $184 with free shipping (normally $194 - use coupon code: [EMCAVNP37]). With 32GB, you should be set for a long time!

Other Deals:

Samsung 850 Pro 2.5-inch 1TB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) for $460 with free shipping (normally $500 - use coupon code: [EMCAVNP22])

Intel Core i7-5820K Haswell-E 6-Core 3.3GHz 140W Desktop Processor for $375 with $2 shipping (normally $390 - use coupon code: [EMCAVNP23])

Toshiba 3TB 7200 RPM 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive for $80 with free shipping (normally $95 - use coupon code: [ESCAVNP26])

MSI 970 Gaming AM3+ AMD 970 ATX AMD Motherboard for $80 with $3 shipping (normally $100 - use coupon code: [EMCAVNP76])

Microsoft Rolls Out Windows 10 Mobile Build 10166 to Slow Ring Users

Posted: 23 Jul 2015 11:34 AM PDT

A better performing build

Windows 10 Mobile

Just a little less than two weeks ago, Microsoft ended the work week by making Windows 10 Mobile Build 10166 available to Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview members signed up for Fast ring access. Now it's available to Slow ring subscribers, too.

Microsoft's Gabe Aul made the announcement on Twitter. Microsoft also updated its blog post from July 10 announcing the availability to Fast ring users.

If you're unfamiliar with what Fast ring and Slow ring means, those on the Fast ring receive new test builds at a faster clip than Slow ring users. While generally stable, releases to the Fast ring might not be as polished or stable, and could be missing certain features. Once they've been tested a little more extensively, they roll out to Slow ring users.

With Build 10166, Microsoft "lots of small changes and feature tweaks." As for changes that were implemented since being released to Fast ring users, the Store in Windows 10 Mobile no longer carries a beta tag.

One of the more annoying bugs that was fixed in Build 10166 is one that affected the lock screen. Some users were having trouble accessing their phones for several minutes after an initial boot, and Build 10166 addresses that issue.

There's still no official release date for Windows 10 Mobile. Once Microsoft launches Windows 10 for desktop users, it will focus on bigger updates to Windows 10 Mobile, allowing for more significant changes and tweaks when new builds roll out.

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Amiga 1000 Turns 30 Years Old

Posted: 23 Jul 2015 11:05 AM PDT

Time flies

Amiga 1000

Kids can make you feel old, both in how fast they grow up and in those puzzled looks they give you after making a dated reference to your childhood or teen years, one that isn't understood by the current generation. If you want to test this, ask your teenager what his or her favorite Richard Pryor is.

Technology will do the same thing, though without making any confused glances in your direction. Need an example? Consider that the Amiga 1000 just turned 30 years old! That's right, if you remember playing games or doing graphics work on an Amiga 1000, then you're pulling up memories from a system that was released three decades ago.

The Amiga 1000 was a fairly badass machine for its day. It was the introductory "Amiga" model from Commodore and for those who could appreciate the hardware inside, the Amiga 1000 a drool worthy PC.

Granted, a Motorola 68000 CPU clocked at 7.15909 MHz (NTSC) or 7.09379MHz (PAL) doesn't sound impressive today, but this was this long before the days of GHz processors and multiple cores.

The Amiga 1000 also featured 256K of memory, which could be doubled by way of a memory expansion slot hidden in the front of the system, and robust graphics and sound capabilities (for the time period).

By all means, the Amiga 1000 was a high end machine, and it was priced as such -- according to Technologizer, it sold for $1,295, which was before adding a $500 color monitor.

Jay Miner Signature

Hype was high for the Amiga 1000, which was unveiled at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in New York's Lincoln Center with celebrities in attendance. It made the cover of InfoWorld, along with Jay Miner, the "father of the Amiga" and one of the system's designers. In fact, his signature is engraved inside Amiga 1000 systems, along with the paw print of his dog Mitchy and signatures of other engineers.

Due to a variety of factors -- bad marketing, high price, compatibility issues -- the Amiga 1000 wasn't as popular as it should have been and goes down as arguably one of the most under-appreciated systems in history.

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Twitch Begins Phasing Out Flash Player for HTML5

Posted: 23 Jul 2015 10:02 AM PDT

Working towards a Flash free web

Twitch

I think it's safe to say that a lot of us are dreaming of the day when Adobe Flash becomes a footnote in the history of the web, but we're not there yet. However, the anti-Flash movement is certainly gaining steam. It's already dead on mobile, and earlier this month, Mozilla began blocking Flash in its Firefox browser by default due to "publicly known vulnerabilities." Now Twitch is talking about leaving Flash in the rear view mirror.

Twitch as talked the talk before, though in a post to Reddit, a staff member for the live streaming video platform insists that the company is walking the walk, albeit slowly. Twitch's destination? HTML5, of course.

According to the staff member, the underlying HTML5 video playback has been undergoing internal testing for the past few months and works famously at this point. However, the challenge for Twitch in leaving Flash behind is it's used for "EVERYTHING" in the moment, in all-caps even. That means having to port every feature one-by-one into HTML/JS.

The other holdup is that browser support for MediaSource Extensions (MSE) isn't fully available for Firefox and older Internet Explorer and Safari builds.

"So, we decided to split the HTML5 player into two releases: 1) move the UI into HTML/JS and 2) move the video into HTML/JS," the staff member explained. "The new player UI is pretty swanky and we'll start rolling it out to users in a few weeks. You'll notice the new HTML interface immediately but the underlying video player will still be Flash."

Once Twitch gets to that point, it will more aggressively pursue moving to HTML5 entirely, starting with an alpha release.

While the waiting part sucks, at least there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and it's pretty promising. According to the staff member, the unoptimized HTML5 video player uses a third of the CPU of Adobe's Flash Player and a "fraction of the memory." And of course there are security benefits to moving away from Flash.

If you're rooting for Flash to fall -- and who isn't these days? -- this is a big deal. As time goes on, Flash continues to lose ground. In addition to what Mozilla did, Google killed Flash as the default player for YouTube back in January, while more recently Facebook's Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos took to Twitter to encourage Adobe "to announce the end-of-life date for Flash."

The more recent outcries are both the result of pent up anger over Flash Player's history of insecurity, as well as frustration over critical security vulnerabilities that came to light when a 400GB cache of files were stolen from Hacking Team, an Italian firm that sells surveillance and exploit software to different governments.

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The Penguin or the Egg: How To Increase Adoption Of Desktop Linux

Posted: 23 Jul 2015 12:00 AM PDT

This article was published in two installments, in the July and August 2015 issues of Maximum PC. For more trusted reviews and feature stories, subscribe here.

Penguin and Egg

Modified Creative Commons image by McKay Savage

Real or perceived shortcomings in software offerings keep too many users away from the free OS

Dual-booting Windows and Linux really sucks. It's not because I hate Windows, either. It's because I feel it should be unnecessary. It's a half-measure that allows a lot of Linux users to play games or get things done.

It doesn't have to be this way, but Linux is faced with a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Users won't switch to Linux until their apps and games will work as expected. Companies like Adobe aren't going to develop native Linux versions of their products unless they have a really good reason (read: they can make money).

I must've rewritten this next part ten times or more, so I think it's best to come right out and say it: The Linux desktop, for the time being, needs proprietary software to draw users.

The gods were thus angered, and Richard Stallman clenched his fists in rage.

I know that sounds absolutely crazy coming from a free and open-source software advocate, but hear me out.

People dual-boot for the same reason more people don't switch to Linux in the first place: One essential piece of software isn't available in Linux. Never mind that Linux offers a customizable and more secure environment; never mind that the monetary cost of installing and using the OS is zero; they need that software. It's the biggest hurdle I face when it comes to trying to make an argument for my favorite OS.

Like it or not, there are holes in the Linux desktop experience if you don't use proprietary software. Skype and Nvidia's video drivers are prime examples of how proprietary software fills a need for Linux users. Right now, you're not going to grow the Linux market share by telling new users, "Sorry, you can only do it the free and open-source way." Business users, designers, and gamers don't want to hear that garbage. They just want to use their machine and complete the tasks they set out to do, preferably without missed sleep and skipped meals from trying to configure Wine properly.

Skype on Linux

Like it or not, the proprietary Skype client is still the best option for the video chat and messaging service on Linux.

To improve the catalog of programs available to desktop Linux, we need to grow a user base that will pay for software. That means regular users and gamers, not just hobbyists and enthusiasts. If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that software companies sure as hell aren't going to release a Linux version of their software unless it makes financial sense. Evernote is a prime example. The company isn't developing a Linux client, as it has said numerous times, despite the howls of desperation coming from Linux users on its forums.

We as users can start sending market signals showing desktop Linux has the customers software companies are looking for. By surfing the web on Linux, we send the signal to research companies who publish statistics based on user agent strings. For gamers, using Steam on Linux sends the same type of signal to game developers.

The people who still use Windows XP (I'm looking at YOU, Uncle Sam) represent a great opportunity for Linux adoption. If these users try a live distribution like Ubuntu and choose to switch, they get to keep their older computer, and get a faster, more reliable experience for surfing the web, typing documents, and reading email.

There are over 2,000 games on Steam available for Linux, including Dota 2, Bioshock: Infinite, and all of Valve's titles. That's a pretty good number, but it's a small share of the over 12,000 titles on Steam. Also, remember that the vast majority of games are proprietary. People want to be able to play GTA V, not just Tux Racer. Releasing more titles to Linux though Steam machines or Steam for desktop Linux helps bring gamers to the OS.

Once there are enough potential customers, hardware and software vendors will have a financial incentive to support desktop Linux. When big vendors release software for Linux, more developers and users may follow. Linux gets better as more users install it as their primary OS.

If I haven't lost you or convinced you that I'm not stark raving mad,  I'm going to explain how the free software community can draw users to Linux next.

We don't yet live in a world where we can ditch proprietary software and still have the same level of functionality and convenience with free software, but that world is possible. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Free Software Foundation, the organization that oversees the GNU project and pushes for a future of software freedom.

GNU brought us most of what we now consider the core tools (like the GNU C Compiler) in GNU/Linux. For that, every GNU/Linux user should be grateful. As Richard Stallman would say, Linux is just a kernel; GNU is the operating system. And lucky us, the programs and utilities that comprise GNU are free (and not just like beer).

For now at least, proprietary software offers a usable experience to those who need features unavailable through free or open-source channels.

That's not all bad, either. The vast majority of games are proprietary and are likely to stay that way. Games, like entertainment films, don't easily lend themselves to an open-source or free software model. Games are artistic storytelling media, not utilitarian tools.

I talked about how bringing proprietary software (besides games) to GNU/Linux could draw more users to the OS. I can still hear Stallman's howls of rage in my head. (I hope that my uses of "GNU/Linux" satiates the beast.)

We won't need as many proprietary solutions if there are more free software solutions that meet users' needs. Free software too often falls short—or has the perception of falling short—of the capabilities of its proprietary counterparts. But here's the thing with free software: The onus falls on us, the community, to fill the holes and create a better experience.

Software costs money to develop. Even while a lot of free and open-source contributions are made through someone's want to contribute as a hobby or passion, hardware and server costs are hefty burdens to lay on development teams. We can grow Linux as users by donating a few bucks to the software projects we use.

Big-name corporate sponsors back many free software projects with money, or even by hiring full-time employees who contribute code. It's great that companies are contributing to programs that everyone is free to use because they realize the value and utility of free software in day-to-day operations. However, not all free software and Linux projects are lucky enough to be backed by a corporate sponsor.

Apache corporate sponsors

The Apache web server gets lots of big corporate love. GNOME and KDE? Not so much.

Companies tend to back projects that further their own bottom line, which results in a big disparity in funding between desktop applications and server applications. If you need an example of this, look at the number of big-name corporate sponsors for the Apache Foundation. When you look at the patrons for the GNOME and KDE projects, corporate names are far fewer in number.

Lest someone think that the free software community is made up of a bunch of long-haired hippie commie pinkos looking for handouts, there is money to be made in free software, too. There is nothing in the GNU General Public License that says you can't sell programs. It simply stipulates that the source code of those programs must be made available to the end user, so they can change and modify it as they wish. The legal ability to do is what makes the software free. Companies like Automattic (WordPress), Red Hat (Fedora), and others have built successful businesses by selling or offering support plans for free software. Making or using free software does not necessarily cede the competitive edge.

If you don't have deep pockets and dollars to spare, there are other ways to contribute. If you know how to write code, consider squashing a bug or two. There are also plenty of projects—like gnuTaxes—that need developers to pick up where the original creator left off because real life intervened, rendering the project orphaned.

You don't need to be a coder to contribute, either. If you're a writer, create some documentation or write a how-to when you solve a specific problem. Graphic designers can contribute artwork to make interfaces more beautiful. Even helping someone out on a forum, IRC channel, or social media goes a long way to make the community more welcoming for those new to Linux.

Investment—whether it be in time or money—by the community will make free software grow. Just as democracy is best realized when citizens participate, the free and open-source community requires the contributions of users. That's the spirit of free software: software for the people, by the people.

People will flock to freedom when they start to see its prosperity, but will hesitate if it means a rough trail of usability and lack of features. Once we pave the roads, others will follow en masse.

Freedom is hard work, but we can do it.
Posted by Shri Krishna

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